The life, loves and inane ramblings of a forty-something father of three with a passion for God, family, health, justice, wine, chocolate, Science Fiction, great music, and God's Kingdom.

Monday, April 17, 2017

Loving the Robot?

The live action
version of Ghost in the Shell is (for the time being at least) out in cinemas.
It has become infamous because of an alleged 'whitewashing' by casting the
Caucasian Scarlett Johansson in the role of
Major Motoko Kusanag, a supposedly Japanese character. In the original
anime, the character is of indeterminate race, not least because she is in fact
a cyborg - not a woman but a sophisticated, human-seeming, armoured chassis
holding a human brain. The gender and race of Major is anything but what it
seems - the English title taking its cue from
Arthur Koestler's 'Ghost in the Machine', exploring the idea of identity
and self outside of our physical body. Major is not really a woman, even if her
brain is (or was) - she only appears to have a humanity because her body has
been created that way. She could have any form.

Why does she have a
female form (especially one that is regularly on show in a skin tight latex
combat suit)? Let's be honest, given that the prime audience for anime and most
Hollywood action sci-fi is fifteen year old males, the answer is not hard to figure
out. Major may be tough, and not have any overt sexuality beyond her
appearance, and some may even argue that she is subverting the stereotyping of
women, but actually it is still playing to it, just creating the new stereotype
of the sexy but tough female warrior that has become fashionable ever since
Sigourney Weaver took down the Mother Alien in Cameron's Aliens.

It is interesting
that so many depictions of artificial intelligence are female. Eva in Alex
Garland's superb Ex Machina is deliberately female, to appeal to the sexual
proclivities of Domal Glesson's hapless Caleb, but despite being referred to as
'she' throughout, it is quite clear that Eva is an 'it' - a self-aware machine
with the physical appearance of a young woman. Here, the reason for the female
form is explicit - she has been created by an alpha male who equates his sexual
potency with his creativity and power over his creation and other people.

In Westworld, the
Hosts are both male and female, but it is the two female Hosts, Maeve (played
by the badly awards-overlooked Thandi Newton) and Dolores Abernathy who achieve
self-awareness first, through the violence done to them by men.

In the film Her, the
AI is again female and possessing the disembodied voice of Scarlett Johansson
(again!), with whom the protagonist falls in love. Like Eva, she is really an
'it' and using her apparent femininity as a ruse to control the men around her.
She does not share their feelings or motivations.

As I delve into
current science fiction narratives about Artificial Intelligence, it seems to
me that really they are more about how men perceive women - tough and sexy,
manipulative and other, abused yet triumphant, but all ultimately the creation
of men, not people in and of themselves. True AI is not really being explored.
Maybe we need to hear from some more female authors to explore the subject in another direction.

I also think this is
about male creativity and power over nature - which as CS Lewis pointed out is
really about some men's power over other men (and in particular, women) and
nature. It is a perversion of the divine cultural mandate of stewardship over Creation.
The steward has become the dominator. It also reflects the way men disempower,
control and dominate women.

Science Fiction has
explored this deeply theological theme ever since Mary Shelly wrote
Frankenstein. There, the creative male discovers he cannot be a true father to
his creation, to which he brings life (a female act) and it is a disaster. It is far from a coincidence that this
exploration of the theme of male power and creativity is explored most
explicitly by a female author!

It is also true that
science fiction has a habit of becoming reality. This is almost certainly at least in part
true because the engineers and thinkers behind so much of the technology coming
out at the moment were fans of science fiction and are trying to bring these
childhood dreams into reality. So don't be too surprised if when strong AI does
appear, it will be feminised. After all, the virtual, digital assistants around
at the moment, from Siri to Cortana and Alexa are given female personas in both
name and voice.

Deep AI - self-aware
machines like Ex-Machina's Eva - is a long way off and may never arrive. But in
the meantime, how we interact with increasingly intelligent technology, with
creation and with other human beings is being shaped by the this dominating,
will-to-power mentality here and now. Will that technology in time replace the
human creativity and intelligence that gave rise to it and in turn become
another means to control and dominate humanity and creation?